Olivia Harris

Chief Executive
Dolphin Living

Olivia Harris was appointed as Chief Executive of Dolphin Living in April 2017. Previously, Olivia was Finance Director at Dolphin, providing financial and commercial oversight on a wide range of property and related projects, including debt and fund raising. Olivia is a Chartered Accountant and has worked for more than 15 years in the property industry.

Ben Turner

Brand & Design Director
Greystar Europe

Freya Richard

Director - Leasing & Operations
Vertus

Katherine Rose

Managing Director
VervLife

Katherine is the Managing Director of VervLife; a specialist consultancy, operations and creative partner for the BTR and rented homes sector engaged on multi-family, single-family and co-living communities. Katherine is an experienced property professional with a wealth of knowledge in the build to rent and private rented sectors, Katherine has a proven track record in mobilising BTR housing, apartment and co-living schemes.

Working within BTR since its genesis in the UK, Katherine is an operational expert and has a keen focus on what shifting resident behaviours and lifestyles mean for the product being brought to market, how technology can be harnessed to drive operational effectiveness and the role of intelligent asset design in enhancing investor returns.

VervLife is committed to lead standards of social value, resident wellness and planetary awareness in the rented residential sector.

Lesley Chen Davison

Chief Operating Officer
Telford Homes

William Krespi

Director, Real Estate Development
Greystar Europe

Neil Brearley

Founding Director
Cast Consultancy

Neil is a Founding Director of Cast and Chief Financial Officer. Neil has 20-years’ experience within the Construction Industry and has worked with many leading developers, housebuilders and contractors in the residential market. Neil has delivered many completed schemes through his career – including major urban regeneration, strategic land, build to rent, later living, student accommodation, for-sale residential, commercial offices and listed buildings. He has personal involvement throughout our portfolio of projects including leading on feasibility & viability setting, establishing core strategy, vetting cost outputs, leading procurement, contract negotiation and service quality assurance. Neil wants to positively influence those with whom he directly works as well as driving wider change in the construction industry. He wants to address the key issues regarding sustainability and the fitness for purpose of our housing model, helping to create dwellings that people aspire to live in. Neil enjoys working with people with a shared vision to challenge the status quo, be that through product development, R&D, Design for Manufacture & Assembly (DfMA), Modern Methods of Construction or carbon led design. Neil has presented at numerous industry seminars relating to residential and construction markets and has acted as an Expert Witness as part of successful evidence submissions in formal hearings.

Miles Keeley

Principal
HubCap

Miles is Principal at HubCap, a specialist developer and subsidiary of HUB, focusing on low carbon short stay living in central London and other lifestyle cities across the UK. Since its inception 18 months ago, HubCap has acquired five “functionally obsolete” commercial buildings spanning over 200,000 sqft, with the goal of re-using and retrofitting them into living space. HubCap has particular focus on emerging urban living models including co-living and aparthotels. Prior to joining HUB and HubCap, Miles spent three years at BlackRock where he was responsible for sourcing, execution, and management of investments for a £1 billion multi-sector property fund and other segregated mandates. He began his career in debt and structured finance, after graduating from Kingston University with First Class honours in Real Estate.

Kate Brown

Head of Marketing
HUB

Jo Green

Director of Business Development
Cortland

Olaide Oboh

Executive Director
Socius

More recently, Olaide is delivering an arts and culture hub
in Bristol to grow and support the local economy and enabling a tech-led offer
at the heart of the Ox-Cam Arc in Milton Keynes. 

Rory Cramer

CEO & Co-Founder
HomeViews

Prior to co-founding HomeViews, Rory spent 13 years in the residential development sector, having been a Senior Director at CBRE before becoming Head of Consultancy at Marsh & Parsons New Homes. Combining this in-depth experience with a substantial contacts list, Rory is now a leading figure in the UK property development sector.As an early investor, co-founder and now CEO, Rory is an advocate for the benefits HomeViews brings and its increasing significance within the property industry. He is passionate about using the HomeViews platform to help raise standards across the built environment – for the benefit of developers, managers, owners and tenants alike.

Matthew Dearlove

Product Director
Way of Life

Ric Blakeway

Housing Ombudsman

Richard was appointed as Housing Ombudsman from 1 September 2019. He has extensive experience in the housing sector, with previous roles including Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, chair of the Homes for London board and a non-executive director of Homes England.

During his eight years at the Greater London Authority, Richard was responsible for housing investment and land generation programmes. He also led the creation of the first team at City Hall to address rough sleeping, commissioning around £10 million of services each year, as well as the first Social Impact Bond on homelessness.

Richard is a former board member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has been an election observer in Somaliland and Ukraine. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the Administrative Justice Council.

Richard also chairs the Ombudsman Association and is a board member of the British Library.

Chris Fletcher

Director of Direct Development
Grainger plc

Stephanie Smith

Head of Living Sector Operations
APO Group

Stephanie Smith, the Head of Living Sector at Hubbl, brings over 20 years of experience in living sector operations, training, and asset management to the panel, having built a career internationally across 11 countries including multifamily/BTR, single family rental, student and senior living assets.  

Prior to joining Hubbl, Stephanie has been with respected operational owner operator and third party management companies, such as Carmel Partners, Alliance Residential and Laramar Group, on behalf of large instituional investors in both North America, England and Ireland. Most recently, she was the Director of Residential Operations at Invesco, focusing on the strategic expansion of European markets and managing a portfolio worth £2.5bn.

Also a founding member of the ARL, Stephanie has been part of the IRPM/ARL joint education task force and the ARL Research & Policy Committee, where she launched the EDI program to promote a more equitable and inclusive property industry. In 2023, this initiative evolved into the launch of the EDI committee, where Stephanie has been appointed Chair, dedicated to serving the sector through a cross-committee approach.

Tim Chapman-Cavanagh

Director
Assael Architecture

Tim is an experienced architect and project director at award-winning Assael Architecture, a large London-based practice that specialises in the intelligent design and successful delivery of residentially-led mixed-use developments. Tim has been responsible for the design of many high-profile projects across all living concepts at Assael, including the redevelopment of the iconic Riverside Studios in Hammersmith and 101 on Cleveland in Westminster. 

Recently, he has spearheaded Assael’s development in the Co-living sector, contributing to the publication of the Urban Land Institute and JLL’s The European Co-living Best Practice Guide in 2022, and directing the design on several Co-living projects across London and Surrey. Tim was involved in our award-winning projects including the RIBA Award Winning Sunday Mills in Wandsworth and Folk at Florence Dock which won the Building & Architecture category at the Co-living awards last month.

Ian Fletcher

Director of Policy
British Property Federation

Ryan Prince

Vice Chairman, Realstar Group
Founder & CEO, UNCLE

Ryan Prince grew up in Toronto, Canada before moving to the UK in 1998 to pursue a post graduate degree at the London School of Economics. At 21, Ryan co-founded iGabriel, an early stage technology venture capital firm with investors including Lord Myners, Peter Gabriel and Brent Hoberman.

Ryan entered the property sector by establishing the international arm of the Realstar Group of companies in 2002. Realstar is a fully integrated real estate investor and manager with $9B of AUM. Since that time, Ryan has led the firm’s overseas efforts in the healthcare, hospitality, student housing and professional living sectors. The firm has gone on to acquire or develop in excess of £3B assets including the UK’s largest hotel real estate transaction, a £1B portfolio of Holiday Inn hotels comprising over 13,000 rooms in a joint venture with GIC Real Estate and Lehman Brothers, which it successfully sold in 2015.

Frustrated by the lack of decent living accommodation in the UK, Ryan established the UNCLE brand in 2017. UNCLE aims to take the ‘lord’ attitude out of being a landlord by offering design-savvy apartments combined with a straight-talking, no-nonsense approach for renters who are tired being treated like second-class citizens in their own homes. Since its launch, UNCLE has opened 7 locations with 4 more on the way, totaling nearly 4,000 apartments, primarily in London and one in Manchester and Leeds. Most recently, Realstar formed a joint venture with QuadReal, the property arm of the province of British Columbia’s pension funds in order to continue to grow the UNCLE portfolio.

Ryan is also on the Leadership Council and Advisory Board of Facing History & Ourselves (www.facinghistory.org), a not‐for‐profit organisation that works with students to take an active role in society in fighting racism and intolerance. He is married with three children.

University of Western Ontario, London School of Economics

Justin Harley

Regional Director
Yardi

Stephanie Pollitt

Programme Director, Housing
BusinessLDN

Francesco Nerici

Chief Creative Officer
Hunter Design

Brian Stevenson

Major Projects Senior Manager
NHBC

With a 35-year career in construction, working in Building Control, Technical Operations and now in NHBC’s Major Projects Team, Brian has an in-depth knowledge of the Building Regulations and associated legislation. He leads a multi-disciplinary team of technical building consultants, building control surveyors, structural engineers and fire engineers. His team has responsibility for the assessment and management of the Building Control and technical risk on the most complex, high-risk and high-value residential or mixed-use developments with NHBC.

David Martin

CEO
Be Known

Antonio Marin-Bataller

Managing Director, Pan- European Transactions
Patrizia SE

Bella Peacock

Senior Managing Director, Investment Management and Operations
Greystar

Bella Peacock is Senior Managing Director and member of the European Leadership team. She is responsible for asset execution across student and multifamily leading the company’s Asset Management and Operations teams across Europe. Bella works with her teams in France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain and UK to ensure the effective implementation of the Greystar global operating model, applying it to the local context of each market to drive asset performance across all stages of the investment lifecycle.

Bella joined Greystar in 2014 as one of the first members of the new European business where she was engaged with the growth of the platform across the region. Prior to Greystar, she worked in the residential real estate sector covering serviced apartments, PRS and BTR at Native where she was responsible for portfolio growth, investor relations and asset management. Bella started her career at The UNITE Group.

Bella is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, Real Estate Balance and The Class Foundation. She earned her Master of Arts in Geography from the University of Oxford before completing her Master of Science in Real Estate Investment and Finance from Henley Business School at the University of Reading.

Harriet Pask

Director of Communication
Quintain

Harriet is Quintain’s Director of Communication, joined the business in 2013 and was appointed to the Operational Board in 2023. Harriet is responsible for directing the strategy for all communication across the Group. Harriet has over 20 years’ experience in public relations and corporate communication and prior to joining Quintain, spent more than a decade in the airline industry specialising in crisis communication and investor relations. Harriet sits on the Strategic Advisory Group for the UKAA and is a member of the Corporate Affairs Committee for the British Property Federation (BPF).

Tom Goodall

Chief Executive Director
Related Argent

Tom joined Argent in 2012, becoming Partner and the Head of Residential for Related Argent in 2020, over-seeing a pipeline of over 8,000 new homes across London. Tom is also CEO of the Related Argent Tottenham Hale development, leading the team which will deliver over 1.2m sq. ft of development including over 1,030 new homes. Prior to this, Tom was responsible for the residential product at the King’s Cross development including the delivery of the Gasholders apartments. 

Before joining Argent, Tom worked in project management consultancy and as a practicing Architect on numerous large-scale mixed-use schemes including the Shard and the London 2012 Athlete’s Village. Tom is a chartered member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and sits on their Housing Group.

Emma Rosser

Associate Director – UK Living Research and Strategy
JLL

Emma leads JLL’s research in UK living capital markets, providing insights and reports on build-to-rent, student accommodation, co-living and later living. She supports JLL’s living capital markets team and the research consultancy. She is a former business analyst and journalist. She was residential editor at Estates Gazette, where she reported on residential investment and development, and established BTR data through EG Radius, alongside a series of print supplements exploring the growth of the sector.

Lesley Roberts

Director of BTR Operations
Godwin Developments

Lesley plays a pivotal role in developing and delivering Godwin’s plans to build a £1 billion national BTR portfolio. Her main remit is the creation of the BTR operational strategy across both the single and multifamily developments for the business. Working in close collaboration with internal teams and external providers, she is responsible for the operational performance and profitability of our single and multifamily assets while also delivering a leading customer experience across the entire proposition.

With a career spanning over 20 years, Lesley has extensive high-level experience with both the BTR and PRS sectors, and has for some time been at the heart of shaping the UK’s Build to Rent offer as President of The UK Apartment Association (UKAA). Prior to joining Godwin, she served as a Partner at Allsop LLP and CEO of Allsop Letting and Management, where she advised developers and institutional investors on the acquisition, design, build and operation of large-scale BTR portfolios. A member of the British Property Federation’s (BPF) residential board, Lesley also toured the US studying the multifamily model there and was instrumental in the concept and development of the UKAA’s BTR Best Practice Guide launched in 2022. She was previously Chair of Soho Housing Association and held roles at Pinnacle Places, Young Group, and City Living London.

Alastair Mullens

Managing Director
Vertus

Alastair joined Canary Wharf Group in 2018, to establish the Canary Wharf Group’s (CWG) Build-to-Rent platform, Vertus. He is currently overseeing the delivery of three seed assets totalling 1,137 units, all based on the Canary Wharf Estate. The first new residential tenants moved in in February 2020. He is now working closely with CWG’s development team to design and envision the future phases of private rental product for the Estate.

Over the last twelve years Alastair has gained a broad experience of the UK residential property market; initially in Residential Management before moving into Residential Development and then centring on the emerging Build-to-Rent market. He spent 9 years with Hamptons International & Countrywide Group based in London and Hong Kong. In 2015 he returned from Asia to focus on Build-to-Rent lease-up delivery for various clients across London. His final role at Countrywide was as National Director of Corporate PRS & Build to Rent, during this time he oversaw the delivery of the group’s operational management platform. This included the delivery of two Build-to-Rent assets in the north-west totalling 488 units for the Vista fund, The Cargo Building in Liverpool and Pomona Wharf in Manchester.

Katherine Russell

Director of Build to Rent
John Lewis Partnership

Katherine graduated from Reading University with a degree in Land Management and spent her initial years at Fuller Peiser, Atisreal & BNP Paribas.

She then moved into the world of retail property, at John Lewis as Property Manager followed by Asset Management and moving into the Head of John Lewis Property in 2016.

In July 2017, she became Group Head of Real Estate, Planning, Policy and Commercial for the John Lewis Partnership, responsible for the strategic delivery of all Real Estate activity in both John Lewis and Waitrose across all asset classes (Retail, Distribution, Office, Residential and Leisure). In addition her role also ensures the commercial delivery of all capital projects, compliance with statutory policy and driving a sustainability strategy for the Property & Development function. Katherine has also been a Trustee and Director of a non profit organisation, setting the strategic direction and overseeing operational delivery.

James Pargeter

Senior Advisor
GAA

James is a recognised advocate for the purpose-built operational Rented Living sector (incl. Build to Rent (BTR) and Single-Family Rent (SFR)) within the wider residential sector, with over 25 years’ varied delivery experience as a Project Manager and Advisor. He aims to help address the UK’s housing crisis through policy and practice, recognising that a full tenure spectrum is key to resolving this challenge. Through successive roles at Deloitte, Greystar and GAA, alongside sector roles including at the ARL, the BPF, and other representative bodies, he has a track record of making positive differences to sector and project outcomes.

James is a tireless campaigner for a much-needed cultural change around renting, including better appreciation of the benefits of purpose-built rental housing, Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), and intermediate affordable homes. He was included in EG's 'BTR's 50 Most Influential’ list.

Rick de Blaby

CEO
Get Living

Simon Scott

Lead Director - Living Capital Markets
JLL

Rebecca Taylor

Managing Director Multi-Family
Long Harbour

Rebecca is the Managing Director of Long Harbour’s BtR / Multifamily business. Since joining Long Harbour in 2015, Rebecca has deployed over £750mn of equity and leads on the LHMF JV which is a £1.5bn partnership with PSP and Cadillac Fairview. Rebecca has over 15 years’ experience in development and investment having worked in projects in Australia, UK, Ireland and UAE. Prior to joining Long Harbour, Rebecca spent eight years at Laing O’Rourke working in their property and investment team. Here she worked on their offsite housing solution and a number of PFI/PPP deals. She is the Vice-Chair of the BPF BTR Committee, is on the steering group for the UKAA Best Practice Guide and a member of the ULI UK Residential Council.

James Saunders

Chief Executive Officer
Quintain

James Saunders was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Quintain in October 2019.

James was previously Chief Operating Officer of Quintain and has been a main board director since 2017. As Chief Operating Officer, James led the place-making and estate management at Wembley Park, commercial partnerships, group marketing, IT and health and safety.

During his time at Quintain, James has led the repositioning of Wembley Park from an event destination to an exciting new neighbourhood for London. He has created the strategic direction for marketing, communications and place making that has led to dramatic reconsideration of the area, increase in footfall, improvements in press coverage and word-of -mouth, plus new partnerships including with Boxpark, Troubadour Theatres and Second Floor Studios.

As Chief Operating Officer, James also oversaw the Wembley Park estate operations team with responsibility for management of The SSE Arena, Wembley, London Designer Outlet, car parking, health and safety, service charge and retail development.

He has managed key stakeholder and commercial partner relationships with GLA, London Borough of Brent, Wembley Stadium, the FA, AEG and Realm, plus other local stakeholders. He was responsible for the renegotiation of agreements with adjacent landowners that unlocked the Wembley Park site from a development and operational perspective.

Prior to joining Quintain, James was the Chief Marketing Officer at The Cloud Networks, a consultant to Vodafone Europe and Brand Director at Coca-Cola Great Britain. He holds a Sloan Masters from London Business School, a Law Degree from Cambridge University and is a barrister-at-law.

David Jennings

Chairman
Movers & Shakers

Leigh Natasha Salter

Managing Director
Movers & Shakers

Leigh Natasha Salter is Managing Director of Movers & Shakers, having formerly been the Business and Events Director. Leigh has been responsible for developing the brand over the last 14 years and was responsible for the launch of the Movers & Shakers UK Regional events programme. Previously she worked in marketing, communications and research, and also ran the Windsor & Maidenhead Borough’s Business to Community Partnership, facilitating CSR for businesses. She qualified at Oxford University with a BA Honours in Human Sciences, and a scholarship, and is also a member of the BPF, WPA and UK-GBC.

James Duncan

Corporate and Funds Partner
Winckworth Sherwood

James is a corporate and funds partner at Winckworth Sherwood. He advises institutional and high net worth promoters and investors on structure and finance for property investment and development. He is an expert in the structure of FCA regulated fund-managers, broker-dealers and their investment entities. James has vast experience of setting up JVs, IPOs and capital raisings as well as LP and LLP financing vehicles. With the tax team he provides a full service for domestic and foreign investors in all UK property tenures. James also works closely with the Social Housing Finance team at Winckworth Sherwood to develop alternative finance models for registered providers implementing their diversification programme. Clients include registered providers such as Genesis and Circle Anglia and investors M&G Investments, Aviva Investors and Europa Capital.

Russell Pedley

Director & Co-Founder
Assael Architecture

Russell is Director and Co-Founder of Assael Architecture. With over 30 years as an architect and 15 years in urban design, he has a strong passion for creating a sense of place with historical and cultural connections in all of his work.

Russell spent many years spearheading Assael’s skills in the design of professionally-managed Build to Rent communities in the private rented sector. Following years of research, including many study trips to the US, and producing design guides for the UK, Assael is now one of the leading architects in the sector, paving the way with key projects such as Union Wharf in Greenwich for Essential Living, Blackhorse Mills in Walthamstow for Legal & General, and Pontoon Dock in Newham for Linkcity. Russell also co-authored both editions of the Urban Land Institute’s Build to Rent: A Best Practice Guide, which was sponsored by the British Government, and he is now Chair of the ULI’s UK Residential Council and advises on MHCLG’s Build to Rent Joint Committee.